Adrian Tchaikovsky - Blood of the Mantis

‘Renegade Wasps,’ Achaeos explained.

Her expression remained disdainful. ‘The very kinden that you yourself warned us of, and now you bring them to spy out our halls. It must be some perversion of spirit that, every time you return home to us, you court banishment. Banishment at best is what you deserve.’

‘I require your aid,’ Achaeos persisted.

‘You have no claim on it,’ she reprimanded him. ‘Your last crusade left many fools amongst our people dead, merely to cripple some single mechanism of the Hated Enemy. Now the eastern Empire holds the city of our enemies, and raises a fleet of flying machines. Their soldiers are coming here, Achaeos.’

‘I…’ Achaeos’ mouth was suddenly dry. ‘I had not realized, so soon…’

‘Oh, this is no great campaign for them,’ the Skryre said acidly. ‘This is a winter pastime for them, a mere diversion, to send a fleet of flying ships up here and install themselves as lords amongst the savage mountain people.’

‘But what will you do?’

‘What we have always done: husband our knowledge against the storm, pry our minds into the cracks and shelter in the darkness. Do not measure us by your crooked standards, Achaeos. The Arcanum has a long reach, and we have found our path to survival.’

‘What is it? Tell me!’

‘I tell you nothing,’ she snapped. ‘You have lost our trust, Achaeos – a son of Tharn and yet your allegiance hangs by a thread. When last you came here, you carried a taint; now you are utterly rotten with your embracing of the enemy.’

He swallowed, hoping that to be just a poor choice of words on her part, but knowing it was not.

‘Why have you come here, Achaeos?’ she demanded.

‘I must have your aid,’ he repeated. ‘No matter what you think of me, I must have it. You have to know that someone has found and freed the Shadow Box of Darakyon. Surely it cannot have escaped your notice.’

‘I have felt its passing,’ she admitted, seeming abruptly subdued, wrapping herself tighter in her robe.

‘I shall retrieve it,’ he said simply. ‘It was stolen for the Wasps, but now it is loose, and I shall find it. And then…’

‘And what?’ Her words hung in the air as, eyes blazing in the darkness, she stalked towards him. ‘Where will you bring such a thing, Achaeos? Have you even considered that? Will you give it to the Hated Enemy and bid them build their confounded machines around it? Will you let the Empire have it, so as to teach them a cruelty even they do not yet possess? Perhaps instead you will lend it to the Spider ladies and lords to become a pawn in their endless games. Perhaps you shall reunite it with the Mantis-kinden, and thus destroy them with weeping over their lost family.’ She was standing only inches from him, glaring. ‘Or would you bring it here?’

‘I… had thought…’

‘You had not.’ Her skinny hand clutched at his collar. ‘Should we lock it here in darkness, Achaeos? Should it be our secret alone, that none may lay hands on such a vile and corrupted thing?’ Her smile, when it came, cut him like ice. ‘And if you could track such a thing across the Lowlands, now that it is awake, which of our people would not hear it beating like a heart within the vaults of our mountain? Which neophyte or seer, or even Skryre, would not dream of the power that box contains, until they would have no free will or choice but they must seek it out. You would make us all into the very mad renegades that laid waste the Darakyon in the first place. You would infect us with their crazed ambition.’

‘But… it will fall into some hands.’

‘If the world is just, it will merely fall to some collector, like that man in Collegium, who will lock it away in some machine-haunted place where it may be lulled to sleep. Otherwise… at least, when the worst comes, it will not be of our doing again.’

She pointed to the doorway. ‘Leave me now, Achaeos. And leave Tharn as soon as you can. Do not return here unless you keep better company than your present. Perhaps it would be best if you did not return at all.’

The words left him feeling weak and sick inside. He had not realized how much strength Che had lent him, when they had last been here together. Through the malaise, something dark rose within him, something dark and barbed.

‘And if I keep the box?’

She fell still, and he thought he saw a glint of caution on her lean face.

‘You have assumed that I would pass it on to some other,’ he said, a little tremble in his voice. ‘What if I should open it myself?’

‘Silence, boy!’ she snapped at him. ‘You are rotted to the very heart. Best to slay you here and now, for who knows what doom you might call down upon your own people.’

‘I am at the bid of the Darakyon,’ he reminded her, ‘so slay the forest’s messenger and who knows what it may do? I would fear to sleep for what dreams might visit me, if I had done such a thing. Yes, even if I were a Skryre of Tharn.’

The Skryre bared her teeth. ‘You will be the end of us. May the Wasps destroy you and the wind scatter your dust! Go, Achaeos. Leave here, and if there is any kindness in fate then you will fail in your quest and be destroyed.’

He turned from her, shaking inwardly with loss and fear, but also with a new anger.

When I have the box, we shall see who commands whom , came the thought, and only later did he pause to wonder where it had come from, for it had not been his own.

The ruddy-skinned Ant, who had seemed on the defensive for the last few passes, suddenly came out with an explosive punch through the guard of his opponent, hammering into the man’s jaw. The bone blade of his Art tore bloody gashes and his victim was spun to the ground, only to be up on his feet a moment later. The two of them, both Ant-kinden but of different cities, circled, and then closed again. As they both tired, more blows got through their defences, more blood was shed.

The crowd loved it. Not just any crowd, of course. This was an assembly of the great and the good: generals, high-placed mercantile officers from the Consortium, men of good family and great wealth. They stood and shook their fists and roared when the blood flew, howling and chanting and urging on the combatants, who needed no such encouragement.

There were only two islands of quiet in this bloodlust. Uctebri was one.

What a spectacle , he thought drily. What wasted blood. The scent of it was in the air, tweaking his senses in a way no other smell could. No Spider harlot’s perfume could touch him like this. To his mind, the odour drowned out the crowd itself.

He sat behind the man who now believed himself Uctebri’s master. They had taken Uctebri’s old dark robe from him and given him another that was quartered, black and gold. It was to show that he was a better degree of slave than he had previously been: a privileged slave. He was valued enough to be finally allowed out of his cell. Or perhaps the Emperor just wanted to keep him close.

The Emperor himself was staring coldly at the fighting Ants. This fight, the whole series of brutal matches the evening had in store, was being thrown in his honour by some favour-seeking family. All around him the lucky invitees were baying for carnage and here sat the Emperor, not missing a moment, not enjoying a move. He never did, Uctebri knew. It was not that the spectacle was lost on him. He had no conscience to stain with the blood of these pugilists, nor high ideals that soared above them. He was a man on whose word 100,000 soldiers would butcher towns and villages. He could have his household slaves gutted before his eyes, his armies raze cities, his Rekef assassins slay monarchs and, knowing he could do all this without effort, he took no pleasure from it. Such ambitions were too petty to hold his interest, and so it was with all his pleasures. He lay with his concubines and ate his fine meals, ordered his subjects and counted his wealth, and it jaded him, day by day, whilst the burdens and fears of his state only preyed ever more on his mind.